Monthly Archives: November 2017

As someone who makes his living teaching professionals how to utilize LinkedIn to generate more business for themselves, I remain convinced that the platform is one of the most exciting – and misunderstood – business opportunities available right now.

For whatever reason, LinkedIn can’t seem to shake the notion that it’s “only” a place to find a job or hire a new employee.

But as I’ve learned spending 48 straight months selling products and services on the site, LinkedIn is one of the biggest (and best) opportunities online right now for you to generate oodles of sales leads, add new clients and land new business.

I want to spend the rest of this post sharing the specific path I see successful professionals taking on LinkedIn when it comes to generating more sales leads, adding customers and increasing revenue.

Some of these tips might seem counterintuitive at first glance, but that’s why they work so well – they break from the conventional wisdom and outdated beliefs about LinkedIn.

Comments and feedback on my post on bookshelf plugins for WordPress taught me that many authors still build a critical part of their website, the pages for each of their books, by hand. I like using said plugins because they make it easy, but I have built a few book pages by hand for a site hosted on Squarespace.

Building a book page freehand takes more work, but it also gives you more opportunity to tweak a design so it fits with a particular author’s style or with the book.

Here’s the checklist I put together to make sure I don’t miss important details. Do let me know in the comments if I left something off.

It’s never been a better time to be a self-published author, and there have never been more book reviewers available to the writer who decides to go indie.

Book reviewers help spread the message about your book by publishing a review to their own network. But if you’re new to publishing, you have to figure out how to get those book reviews that can bring you more readers.

Amazon is giving out $2.00 in free credit for readers who want to Start a New Kindle Series. There are over four hundred ebooks available and they are primarily split between four different genres; literature, mystery, romance and science fiction & fantasy.

Guest post by K. Patrick Donoghue

When I listed the Kindle and Nook editions of my second novel, Race for the Flash Stone , to accept preorders, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Big-name authors routinely list their upcoming titles for preorders, and their books-in-waiting always seem to immediately pop onto the best-seller lists. But what could an unknown indie author hope to achieve by employing the same practice? The answer: Whoa, Nelly!

Of course, I hoped accepting preorders for my book would generate sales in advance of the official release, but I had no idea how many to anticipate. I set my expectations low and chastened myself to primarily treat the 60-day preorder window as an opportunity to build awareness of the upcoming release among my Facebook and blog followers. That tempered view quickly changed within days after listing the book for preorders on Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s website, bn.com.

Sales quickly accumulated, and this led to a few unexpected side benefits that continue to accrue as of this writing, two months after the official release date. In short, I received 3 powerful benefits from listing my book for preorders that led to a book launch that exceeded my expectations:

1. Unsolicited buzz by Amazon and Barnes & Noble

2. Faster accumulation of reviews and ratings for the new book

3. Early read on sales level led me to boost advertising investment in first book

Before describing these benefits in more depth, it’s likely of value to provide some brief background to assist fellow newbie indie authors in determining whether my preorder insights are of value.

Media Attention: 9 Ways Any Author Can Get It

New BookWorks member, Chris Well of Build Your Brand Academy, graciously offered to share his expertise as a 30+ year media veteran, to help authors connect with media opportunities. Thanks, Chris! In today’s publishing landscape, it’s tougher than ever for authors to be discovered. There are so many books competing for those potential readers. That’s…

New BookWorks member, Chris Well of Build Your Brand Academy, graciously offered to share his expertise as a 30+ year media veteran, to help authors connect with media opportunities. Thanks, Chris!

In today’s publishing landscape, it’s tougher than ever for authors to be discovered. There are so many books competing for those potential readers. That’s why free media attention can boost your visibility.

Once you’ve set up your author website and updated your social media profiles, one of the most effective ways to rise above the noise is to convince an influencer in the media to put you in front of their audience. That puts your name—and your book—in front of far more potential readers than you can possibly reach yourself.When you appear in the media, you can leverage their platform to build your platform.

“All you need to be a writer is a pen and paper,” is something you might say if you’re one of those smug savants who can just sit down and write an entire novel longhand.

But for the rest of us? Well, we can take all the help we can get. Naturally, there are the everyday low-fi accessories that every writer should already have in their arsenal, like notebooks and a reliable pen. But there are also a bunch of high tech tools that the interwebs can offer us.

While it’s true that having an online business opens you up to thousands (or even millions) of potential customers, and offers huge scope for many businesses, it’s a hugely competitive marketplace. There are literally millions of potential customers, and there are also millions of competitors all fighting for the same piece of the pie.

If you’ve recently tried to rank highly for a particular search term, you’ve no doubt seen how difficult it is. As you’re probably already aware, if you can’t get onto the first page of Google, you might as well be nowhere. The first place on Google can garner up to 34% clicks from all searches for that term. If you’re 11th (first on the second page), you might struggle to get 1%.

This is why going offline can help you get a corner of the market that your rivals may have ignored.